The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer night's Dream' by Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

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REGINALD SCOT

DISCOVERY OF WITCHCRAFT (1584)

_From_ "To the Readers."

I should no more prevail herein [_i.e._ in securing attention] than if a
hundred years since I should have entreated your predecessors to believe,
that Robin Goodfellow, that great and ancient bull-beggar, had been but a
cozening merchant and no devil indeed.... But Robin Goodfellow ceaseth now
to be much feared, and popery is sufficiently discovered.

Book I, chap. iv.--"What miraculous actions are imputed to witches by
witchmongers, papists, and poets."

[Quoted here to show that certain attributes of Shakespeare's fairies
belong also to witches.]

[They] raise hail, tempests, and hurtful weather, as lighting, thunder,
&c.... These can pass from place to place in the air invisible.... These
can alter men's minds to inordinate love or hate.... Ovid affirmeth that
they can raise and suppress lighting and thunder, rain and hail, clouds and
winds, tempests and earthquakes. Others do write that they can pull down
the moon and the stars.... They can also bring to pass, that, churn as long
as you list, your butter will not come.

Book III, chap. iv.

The Fairies do principally inhabit the mountains and caverns of the earth,
whose nature is to make strange apparitions on the earth, in meadows or on
mountains, being like men and women, soldiers, kings, and ladies, children
and horsemen, clothed in green, to which purpose they do in the night steal
hempen stalks from the fields where they grow, to convert them into horses,
as the story goes.... Such jocund and facetious spirits are said to sport
themselves in the night by tumbling and fooling with servants and shepherds
in country houses, pinching them black and blue, and leaving bread, butter,
and cheese sometimes with them, which, if they refuse to eat, some mischief
shall undoubtedly befall them by the means of these Fairies; and many such
have been taken away by the said spirits for a fortnight or a month
together, being carried with them in chariots through the air, over hills
and dales, rocks and precipices, till at last they have been found lying in
some meadow or mountain, bereaved of their senses and commonly one of their
members to boot.

Book III, chap. xvi.

It may not be omitted that certain wicked women ... being seduced by the
illusion of devils, believe and profess that in the night-times they ride
abroad with Diana, the goddess of the Pagans, or else with Herodias, with
an innumerable multitude, upon certain beasts, and pass over many countries
and nations in the silence of the night, and do whatsoever those fairies or
ladies command.

Book IV, chap. x.

Indeed your grandam's maids were wont to set a bowl of milk before him and
his cousin, Robin Goodfellow, for grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping
the house at midnight; and you have also heard that he would chafe
exceedingly, if the maid or goodwife of the house, having compassion of his
nakedness, laid any clothes for him, besides his mess of white bread and
milk which was his standing fee. For in that case he saith: What have we
here? Hemton hamton[1], here will I never more tread nor stampen.

Book V, chap. iii. "Of a man turned into an ass, and returned again into a
man, by one of Bodin's witches: S. Augustine's opinion thereof." (See p.
30.)

It happened in the city of Salamin in the kingdom of Cyprus, where there is
a good haven, that a ship loaden with merchandise stayed there for a short
space. In the meantime many of the soldiers and mariners went to shore, to
provide fresh victuals; among which number a certain Englishman, being a
sturdy young fellow, went to a woman's house, a little way out of the city,
and not far from the sea-side, to see whether she had any eggs to sell.
Who, perceiving him to be a lusty young fellow, a stranger, and far from
his country (so as, upon the loss of him, there would be the less miss or
enquiry), she considered with herself how to destroy him; and willed him to
stay there awhile, whilst she went to fetch a few eggs for him. But she
tarried long, so as the young man called unto her desiring her to make
haste; for he told her that the tide would be spent, and by that means his
ship would be gone, and leave him behind. Howbeit, after some detracting of
time, she brought him a few eggs, willing him to return to her, if his ship
were gone when he came.

The young fellow returned towards his ship, but before he went aboard, he
would needs eat an egg or twain to satisfy his hunger; and within short
space he became dumb and out of his wits, as he afterwards said. When he
would have entered into the ship, the mariners beat him back with a cudgel,
saying, "What a murrain lacks the ass? Whither the devil will this ass?"
The ass, or young man--I cannot tell by which name I should term him--being
many times repelled, and understanding their words that called him ass,
considering that he could speak never a word and yet could understand
everybody, he thought that he was bewitched by the woman at whose house he
was. And therefore, when by no means he could get into the boat, but was
driven to tarry and see her departure, being also beaten from place to
place as an ass, he remembered the witch's words, and the words of his own
fellows that called him ass, and returned to the witch's house; in whose
service he remained by the space of three years, doing nothing with his
hands all that while, but carried such burthens as she laid on his back;
having only this comfort, that, although he were reputed an ass among
strangers and beasts, yet that both this witch and all other witches knew
him to be a man.

After three years were passed over, in a morning betimes he went to town
before his dame, who upon some occasion ... stayed a little behind. In the
meantime being near to a church, he heard a little sacring-bell ring to the
elevation of a morrow mass; and not daring to go into the church, lest he
should have been beaten and driven out with cudgels, in great devotion he
fell down in the churchyard upon the knees of his hinder legs, and did lift
his forefeet over his head, as the priest doth hold the sacrament at the
elevation. Which prodigious sight when certain merchants of Genoa espied,
and with wonder beheld, anon cometh the witch with a cudgel in her hand,
beating forth the ass. And because, as it hath been said, such kinds of
witchcrafts are very usual in those parts, the merchants aforesaid made
such means as both the ass and the witch were attached by the judge. And
she, being examined and set upon the rack, confessed the whole matter, and
promised that if she might have liberty to go home, she would restore him
to his old shape; and being dismissed she did accordingly. So as
notwithstanding they apprehended her again, and burned her; and the young
man returned into his country with a joyful and merry heart.

Book VII, chap. ii.

"Know you this by the way, that heretofore Robin Goodfellow and Hobgoblin
were as terrible, and also as credible to the people, as hags and witches
be now: and in time to come a witch will be as much derided and contemned,
and as plainly perceived, as the illusion and knavery of Robin Goodfellow.
And in truth, they that maintain walking spirits with their transformation,
&c, have no reason to deny Robin Goodfellow, upon whom there hath gone as
many and as credible tales as upon witches; saving that it hath not pleased
the translators of the Bible to call spirits by the name of Robin
Goodfellow, as they have termed diviners, soothsayers, poisoners, and
cozeners by the name of witches."

Book VII, chap. xv.

"But certainly some one knave in a white sheet hath cozened and abused many
thousands that way; specially when Robin Goodfellow kept such a coil in the
country.... They [our mothers' maids] have so fraid us with bull-beggars,
spirits, witches, urchins, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, fauns,
sylens, Kit with the canstick[2], tritons, centaurs, dwarfs, giants, imps,
calkers, conjurors, nymphs, changelings, Incubus, Robin Goodfellow, the
spoorn, the mare, the man in the oak, the hell-wain, the fire-drake, the
puckle, Tom Thumb, hobgoblin, Tom tumbler, boneless, and other such beings,
that we are afraid of our own shadows."

Book XIII, chap. xix. [To set an horse's or an ass's head on a man's neck
and shoulders.] (See p. 30.)

The words used in such case are uncertain, and to be recited at the
pleasure of the witch or cozener. But at the conclusion of this, cut off
the head of a horse or an ass (before they be dead, otherwise the virtue or
strength thereof will be the less effectual), and make an earthen vessel of
fit capacity to contain the same, and let it be filled with the oil and fat
thereof, cover it close, and daub it over with loam; let it boil over a
soft fire three days continually, that the flesh boiled may run into oil,
so as the bare bones may be seen; beat the hair into powder, and mingle the
same with the oil; and anoint the heads of the standers by, and they shall
seem to have horses' or asses' heads.

Discourse upon Devils and Spirits, chap. xi.

"The Rabbins and, namely, Rabbi Abraham, writing upon the second of
Genesis, do say that God made the fairies, bugs, Incubus, Robin Goodfellow,
and other familiar or domestic spirits and devils on the Friday; and being
prevented with the evening of the Sabbath, finished them not, but left them
unperfect; and that therefore, that ever since they use to fly the holiness
of the Sabbath, seeking dark holes in mountains and woods, wherein they
hide themselves till the end of the Sabbath, and then come abroad to
trouble and molest men."

Discourse, &c., chap. xxi.

"_Virunculi terrei_ are such as was Robin Goodfellow, that would supply the
office of servants--specially of maids: as to make a fire in the morning,
sweep the house, grind mustard and malt, draw water, &c.; these also rumble
in houses, draw latches, go up and down stairs, &c.... There go as many
tales upon this Hudgin[3] in some parts of Germany, as there did in England
of Robin Goodfellow."

* * * * *

STRANGE FARLIES

Strange farlies[1] fathers told
Of fiends and hags of hell;
And how that Circes, when she would,
Could skill of sorcery well;

And how old thin-faced wives,
That roasted crabs by night,
Did tell of monsters in their lives
That now prove shadows light;

And told what Merlin spoke
Of world and times to come;
But all that fire doth make no smoke,
For in mine ear doth hum

Another kind of bee,
That sounds a tune most strange,
A trembling noise of words to me
That makes my countenance change.

Of old Hobgobling's guise,
That walked like ghost in sheets,
With maids that would not early rise
For fear of bugs and sprites.

Some say the fairies fair
Did dance on Bednall Green,
And fine familiars of the air
Did talk with men unseen.

And oft in moonshine nights,
When each thing draws to rest,
Was seen dumb shows and ugly sights
That feared[2] every guest

Which lodged in the house;
And where good cheer was great,
Hodgepoke would come and drink carouse
And munch up all the meat.

But where foul sluts did dwell,
Who used to sit up late,
And would not scour the pewter well,
There came a merry mate

To kitchen or to hall,
Or place where sprites resort;
Then down went dish and platters all
To make the greater sport.

A further sport fell out
When they to spoil did fall;
Rude Robin Goodfellow, the lout,
Would skim the milk-bowls all,

And search the cream-pots too,
For which poor milk-maid weeps.
God wot what such mad guests will do
When people soundly sleeps!

. . . . . .

These are but fables feigned,
Because true stories old
In doubtful days are more disdained
Than any tale is told.

THOMAS CHURCHYARD

from _A Handfull of Gladsome Verses_ (1592).

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THE MAD MERRY PRANKS OF ROBIN GOOD-FELLOW

(To the Tune of _Dulcina_.)

From Oberon, in fairy land,
The king of ghosts and shadows there,
Mad Robin I, at his command,
Am sent to view the night-sports here.
What revel rout
Is kept about,
In every corner where I go,
I will o'ersee
And merry be,
And make good sport, with ho, ho, ho!

More swift than lightning can I fly
About this airy welkin soon,
And, in a minute's space, descry
Each thing that's done below the moon,
There's not a hag
Or ghost shall wag,
Or cry, ware Goblins! where I go,
But Robin I
Their feats will spy,
And send them home, with ho, ho, ho!

Whene'er such wanderers I meet,
As from their night-sports they trudge home;
With counterfeiting voice I greet
And call them on, with me to roam
Thro' woods, thro' lakes,
Thro' bogs, thro' brakes;
Or else, unseen, with them I go,
All in the nick
To play some trick
And frolic it, with ho, ho, ho!

Sometimes I meet them like a man;
Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound;
And to a horse I turn me can,
To trip and trot about them round.
But if, to ride,
My back they stride,
More swift than wind away I go,
O'er hedge and lands,
Thro' pools and ponds
I whirry, laughing ho, ho, ho!

When lads and lasses merry be,
With possets and with junkets fine;
Unseen of all the company,
I eat their cakes and sip their wine;
And, to make sport,
I sniff and snort;
And out the candles I do blow:
The maids I kiss;
They shriek--Who's this?
I answer nought but ho, ho, ho!

Yet now and then, the maids to please,
At midnight I card up their wool;
And while they sleep and take their ease,
With wheel to threads their flax I pull.
I grind at mill
Their malt up still;
I dress their hemp, I spin their tow,
If any wake,
And would me take,
I wend me, laughing ho, ho, ho!

When house or hearth doth sluttish lie,
I pinch the maidens black and blue;
The bed-clothes from the bed pull I,
And lay them naked all to view.
'Twixt sleep and wake,
I do them take,
And on the key-cold floor them throw:
If out they cry,
Then forth I fly,
And loudly laugh out ho, ho, ho!

When any need to borrow ought,
We lend them what they do require:
And for the use demand we nought;
Our own is all we do desire.
If to repay
They do delay,
Abroad amongst them then I go,
And, night by night,
I them affright
With pinchings, dreams, and ho, ho, ho!

When lazy queans have nought to do,
But study how to cog and lie;
To make debate and mischief too,
'Twixt one another secretly:
I mark their gloze,
And it disclose,
To them whom they have wronged so:
When I have done,
I get me gone,
And leave them scolding, ho, ho, ho!

When men do traps and engines set
In loop-holes, where the vermin creep,
Who from their folds and houses, get
Their ducks and geese, and lambs and sheep;
I spy the gin,
And enter in,
And seem a vermin taken so;
But when they there
Approach me near,
I leap out laughing ho, ho, ho!

By wells and rills, in meadows green,
We nightly dance our heydeguys;
And to our fairy king and queen
We chant our moon-light minstrelsies.
When larks 'gin sing,
Away we fling;
And babes new-born steal as we go,
And elf in bed
We leave instead,
And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ho!

From hag-bred Merlin's time have I
Thus nightly revell'd to and fro:
And for my pranks men call me by
The name of Robin Good-fellow.
Fiends, ghosts, and sprites,
Who haunt the nights,
The hags and goblins do me know;
And beldames old
My feats have told;
So _Vale, Vale_; ho, ho, ho!

_A black-letter broadside, XVIIth cent._

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QUEEN MAB

_Satyr_
This is Mab, the mistress fairy,
That doth nightly rob the dairy,
And can hunt or help the churning
As she please without discerning.
. . . . . .
She that pinches country wenches
If they rub not clean their benches,
And with sharper nails remembers
When they rake not up their embers;
But if so they chance to feast her,
In a shoe she drops a tester.
. . . . . .
This is she that empties cradles,
Takes out children, puts in ladles;
Trains forth midwives in their slumber,
With a sieve the holes to number,
And then leads them from her boroughs
Home through ponds and water-furrows.
. . . . . .
She can start our franklins' daughters,
In her sleep, with shrieks and laughters,
And on sweet St. Anna's night
Feed them with a promised sight--
Some of husbands, some of lovers,
Which an empty dream discovers.

BEN JONSON, masque of _A Satyr_ (1603).

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A Proper New Ballad, intituled

THE FAIRIES' FAREWELL: OR GOD-A-MERCY WILL

(To be sung or whistled to the Tune of the _Meadow Brow_ by the learned; by
the unlearned, to the Tune of _Fortune_.)

Farewell rewards and Fairies!
Good housewives, now you may say;
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they;
And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?

Lament, lament old abbeys,
The fairies' lost command;
They did but change priests' babies;
But some have changed your land;
And all your children sprung from thence
Are now grown Puritans,
Who live as changelings ever since
For love of your demesnes.

At morning and at evening both
You merry were and glad,
So little care of sleep or sloth
These pretty ladies had.
When Tom came home from labour,
Or Ciss to milking rose,
Then merrily, merrily went their tabour,
And nimbly went their toes.

Witness those rings and roundelays
Of theirs, which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days
On many a grassy plain.
But since of late Elizabeth
And later James came in,
They never danced on any heath,
As when the time hath bin.

By which we note the fairies
Were of the old profession;
Their songs were _Ave Maries_,
Their dances were procession.
But now, alas! they all are dead,
Or gone beyond the seas,
Or farther for religion fled,
Or else they take their ease.

A tell-tale in their company
They never could endure;
And whoso kept not secretly
Their mirth, was punished sure:
It was a just and Christian deed
To pinch such black and blue:
O how the common-wealth doth [need][1]
Such justices as you!

Now they have left our quarters;
A Register they have
Who looketh to their charters,
A man both wise and grave.
An hundred of their merry pranks
By one that I could name
Are kept in store; con twenty thanks
To William for the same.

* * * * *

To William Churne of Staffordshire
Give laud and praises due,
Who every meal can mend your cheer
With tales both old and true:
To William all give audience,
And pray ye for his noddle:
For all the fairies evidence
Were lost, if it were addle.

RICHARD CORBET (1582-1625),
from _Poetica Stromata_ (1648)

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THE FAIRY QUEEN

Come, follow, follow me,
You fairy elves that be,
Which circle on the green,
Come follow me your queen;
Hand in hand let's dance around,
For this place is fairy ground.

When mortals are at rest,
And snorting in their nest,
Unheard and unespied
Through keyholes we do glide:
Over tables, stools, and shelves.
We trip it with our fairy elves.

And if the house be foul,
Or platter, dish, or bowl,
Upstairs we nimbly creep
And find the sluts asleep;
There we pinch their arms and thighs;
None escapes nor none espies.

But if the house be swept,
And from uncleanness kept,
We praise the household maid
And surely she is paid;
For we do use, before we go,
To drop a tester in her shoe.

Upon a mushroom's head
Our table we do spread;
A corn of rye or wheat
Is manchet which we eat,
Pearly drops of dew we drink
In acorn cups filled to the brink.

The brains of nightingales
With unctuous dew of snails
Between two nutshells stewed
Is meat that's easily chewed;
And the beards of little mice
Do make a feast of wondrous price.

On tops of dewy grass
So nimbly do we pass,
The young and tender stalk
Ne'er bends when we do walk;
Yet in the morning may be seen
Where we the night before have been.

The grasshopper and fly
Serve for our minstrelsy.
Grace said, we dance awhile,
And so the time beguile;
And when the moon doth hide her head,
The glow-worm lights us home to bed.

From _The Mysteries of Love and
Eloquence_ (1658); with a preface
signed E[dward] P[hillips].

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NYMPHIDIA:

THE COURT OF FAIRY

Old Chaucer doth of Topas tell,
Mad Rab'lais of Pantagruel,
A later third of Dowsabel,
With such poor trifles playing;
Others the like have laboured at,
Some of this thing and some of that,
And many of they know not what,
But that they must be saying.

Another sort there be, that will
Be talking of the Fairies still,
Nor never can they have their fill,
As they were wedded to them;
No tales of them their thirst can slake,
So much delight therein they take,
And some strange thing they fain would make,
Knew they the way to do them.

Then since no Muse hath been so bold,
Or of the later, or the old,
Those elvish secrets to unfold,
Which lie from others' reading,
My active Muse to light shall bring
The Court of that proud Fairy King,
And tell there of the revelling:
Jove prosper my proceeding!

And thou, Nymphidia, gentle Fay,
Which, meeting me upon the way,
These secrets didst to me bewray,
Which now I am in telling;
My pretty, light, fantastic maid,
I here invoke thee to my aid,
That I may speak what thou hast said,
In numbers smoothly swelling.

This palace standeth in the air,
By necromancy placed there,
That it no tempests needs to fear,
Which way soe'er it blow it;
And somewhat southward toward the noon,
Whence lies a way up to the moon,
And thence the Fairy can as soon
Pass to the earth below it.

The walls of spiders' legs are made
Well mortised and finely laid;
He was the master of his trade
It curiously that builded;
The windows of the eyes of cats,
And for the roof, instead of slats,
Is covered with the skins of bats,
With moonshine that are gilded.

Hence Oberon him sport to make,
Their rest when weary mortals take,
And none but only fairies wake,
Descendeth for his pleasure;
And Mab, his merry Queen, by night
Bestrides young folks that lie upright[1]
(In elder times, the mare that hight),
Which plagues them out of measure.

Hence shadows, seeming idle shapes,
Of little frisking elves and apes
To earth do make their wanton scapes,
As hope of pastime hastes them:
Which maids think on the hearth they see
When fires well-near consumed be,
There dancing hays[2] by two and three,
Just as their fancy casts them.

These make our girls their sluttery rue,
By pinching them both black and blue,
And put a penny in their shoe
The house for cleanly sweeping;
And in their courses make that round
In meadows and in marshes found,
Of them so called the Fairy Ground,
Of which they have the keeping.

These when a child haps to be got
Which after proves an idiot
When folk perceive it thriveth not,
The fault therein to smother,
Some silly, doating brainless calf
That understands things by the half,
Say that the Fairy left this aulfe[3]
And took away the other.

But listen, and I shall you tell
A chance in Fairy that befell,
Which certainly may please some well
In love and arms delighting,
Of Oberon that jealous grew
Of one of his own Fairy crew,
Too well, he feared, his Queen that knew
His love but ill requiting.

Pigwiggen[4] was this Fairy Knight,
One wondrous gracious in the sight
Of fair Queen Mab, which day and night
He amorously observed;
Which made King Oberon suspect
His service took too good effect,
His sauciness and often checkt,
And could have wished him starved[5].

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